Censoring the Internet Moves to silence dissent?

[Peter Lemkin]

posting by Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vols. I-V (2009):

Date Sent: 01/23/2010
Subject: The "Beginning of the End" of the First Amendment?

Message:

I find the position taken by Cass Sunstein in his 2008 paper on the danger he perceives from those who espouse conspiracy theories not only reprehensible, but quite alarming.

His proposals that the U.S. government should not only infiltrate groups that allege conspiracies as the explanations for various historical events, but actively disrupt their communications---and that the U.S. government should also counter their claims through the use of third-party surrogates---are particularly alarming, when they come from a Harvard liberal who is described as a friend of Barack Obama. When one considers that he was subsequently appointed as the Head of Information in President Obama's administration, the positions he expressed in his 2008 paper are downright alarming.

I would have expected such attitudes from the previous administration---from Dick Cheney or George W. Bush---but to hear these proposals made by a liberal law scholar, who is now a member of the Obama administration, is downright alarming.

What Mr. Sunstein is advocating is a return to the situation prevalent in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which Army intelligence had penetrated virtually every anti-war group that opposed the conflict in Vietnam. Civil liberties meant nothing to the establishment during the Vietnam conflict, and apparently, if Mr. Sunstein has his way, we will soon return to that climate of active government surveillance and infiltration. (Perhaps we are already there now, and this is the first open acknowledgment of it.)

If the courses of action proposed by Mr. Sunstein in his 29-page paper were to be implemented, it would constitute a crushing blow to First Amendment rights, and could usher in the beginning of a police state in the nation that for years has prided itself as "the world's leading democracy."

I will speak here only of the JFK assassination, with which I am familiar, as a former government official, historian, and author. Sunstein apparently has the arrogance to assume that any and all conspiracy allegations about the JFK assassination that posit any government involvement (in either the murder or in a coverup)are incorrect; from this breathtaking and unproven assumption, he proceeds to advocate disruption and suppression of any such views. I know, from my former role as a government official on the staff of the ARRB (from 1995-1998), that there is overwhelming evidence of a government-directed medical coverup in the death of JFK, and of wholesale destruction of autopsy photographs, autopsy x-rays, early versions of the autopsy report, and biological materials associated with the autopsy. Furthermore, dishonest autopsy photographs were created; skull x-rays were altered; the contents of the autopsy report changed over time as different versions were produced; and the brain photographs in the National Archives cannot be photographs of President Kennedy's brain---they are fraudulent, substitute images of someone else's brain.

I would like to pose a question for Mr. Sunstein: if a medical coverup of JFK's assassination were proven---and I believe I have done so in my 2009 book "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board"---do you believe those facts should be made public, or do you believe those conclusions should be supressed and/or discredited in the interests of "institutional integrity?"

What is at stake here really is trust in the government, but not in the way that Mr. Sunstein sees it. If, for example, the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's assassination was altered immediately following his assassination to hide certain facts about the shooting (i.e., evidence of shots from the front), does Mr. Sunstein (and the administration he serves) believe that evidence related to the film's alteration (while in the hands of the government) should be released 46 years later, or suppressed? This is no mere hypothetical question. My FOIA request for CIA records pertaining to the Zapruder film's apparent alteration remains unanswered---indeed, unacknowledged---over four months after I submitted it in September of 2009. President Obama came into office promising to show a new respect the Freedom of Information Act and all FOIA requests. Now that I have learned about Mr. Sunstein's attitude about those who allege conspiracies, I am wondering anew why I have not yet received a response to my FOIA request.

Sunstein's 2008 article amounts to an assault on First Amendment rights, and in fact has created a cloud over the White House. The mere fact that this man holds the position of Chief of Information in the Executive Branch casts doubt upon the credibility of the U.S. government, and threatens to make President Obama's professed respect for the FOIA process ring hollow.

Cass Sunstein should resign immediately, and President Obama should publicly renounce the positions taken in Sunstein's 2008 paper. I do not want to live in a United States of America where the government infiltrates groups who criticize past government actions, and uses third-party surrogates to attempt to discredit their views. President Kennedy was not afraid of the free marketplace of ideas, and in 1962 said: "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." I hope that the Obama administration is not afraid of the American people, or of our right to know, or of our ability to discern truth from falsehood. Retaining Cass Sunstein in his current position sends the wrong message.

Cass Sunstein, I say: "RESIGN NOW."

Doug Horne
Former Chief Analyst for Military Records,
Assassination Records Review Board